]]>https://badgerbird.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/homoeopathy-for-radiation-therapy/feed/0badgerbirdSimplicityhttps://badgerbird.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/simplicity/
https://badgerbird.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/simplicity/#respondTue, 04 Oct 2011 12:12:24 +0000http://badgerbird.wordpress.com/?p=36The touch of a hand can dissolve the energy of anger, reforming it into a smile.

Originally presented at the Tenth International Personal Construct Congress, Berlin, 1999, and subsequently developed in his work on constructivist theory in relation to service provision organisations at Leicester University, England, John Fisher’s model of personal change – The Transition Curve – is an excellent analysis of how individuals deal with personal change. This model is an extremely useful reference for individuals dealing with personal change and for managers and organizations helping staff to deal with personal change. This item is written by John Fisher and published with his permission. See also John Fisher’s Process of Transition diagrams on the free online training resources section, or go direct to J Fisher’s original Process of Transition diagram or his updated 2003 diagram, (both pdf). A French version of John Fisher’s Process of Transition diagram (pdf) is also available, with thanks to the Canadian International Development Agency for the translation. Also a Spanish version of John Fisher’s Process of Transition diagram (pdf), with thanks to Marcelo Rivadeneira.

john fisher’s personal transition curve

anxiety

The awareness that events lie outside one’s range of understanding or control. I believe the problem here is that individuals are unable to adequately picture the future. They do not have enough information to allow them to anticipate behaving in a different way within the new organization. They are unsure how to adequately construe acting in the new work and social situations.

happiness

The awareness that one’s viewpoint is recognised and shared by others. The impact of this is two-fold. At the basic level there is a feeling of relief that something is going to change, and not continue as before. Whether the past is perceived positively or negatively, there is still a feeling of anticipation, and possibly excitement, at the prospect of improvement. On another level, there is the satisfaction of knowing that some of your thoughts about the old system were correct (generally no matter how well we like the status quo, there is something that is unsatisfactory about it) and that something is going to be done about it. In this phase we generally expect the best and anticipate a bright future, placing our own construct system onto the change and seeing ourselves succeeding. One of the dangers in this phase is that of the inappropriate psychological contract. We may perceive more to the change, or believe we will get more from the change than is actually the case. The organization needs to manage this phase and ensure unrealistic expectations are managed and redefined in the organizations terms, without alienating the individual.

fear

The awareness of an imminent incidental change in one’s core behavioural system. People will need to act in a different manner and this will have an impact on both their self-perception and on how others externally see them. However, in the main, they see little change in their normal interactions and believe they will be operating in much the same way, merely choosing a more appropriate, but new, action.

threat

The awareness of an imminent comprehensive change in one’s core behavioural structures. Here clients perceive a major lifestyle change, one that will radically alter their future choices and other people’s perception of them. They are unsure as to how they will be able to act/react in what is, potentially, a totally new and alien environment – one where the “old rules” no longer apply and there are no “new” ones established as yet.

guilt

Awareness of dislodgement of self from one’s core self perception. Once the individual begins exploring their self-perception, how they acted/reacted in the past and looking at alternative interpretations they begin to re-define their sense of self. This, generally, involves identifying what are their core beliefs and how closely they have been to meeting them. Recognition of the inappropriateness of their previous actions and the implications for them as people can cause guilt as they realise the impact of their behaviour.

depression

This phase is characterised by a general lack of motivation and confusion. Individuals are uncertain as to what the future holds and how they can fit into the future “world”. Their representations are inappropriate and the resultant undermining of their core sense of self leaves them adrift with no sense of identity and no clear vision of how to operate.

disillusionment

The awareness that your values, beliefs and goals are incompatible with those of the organization. The pitfalls associated with this phase are that the employee becomes unmotivated, unfocused and increasingly dissatisfied and gradually withdraws their labour, either mentally (by just “going through the motions”, doing the bare minimum, actively undermining the change by criticising/complaining) or physically by resigning.

hostility

Continued effort to validate social predictions that have already proved to be a failure. The problem here is that individual’s continue to operate processes that have repeatedly failed to achieve a successful outcome and are no longer part of the new process or are surplus to the new way of working. The new processes are ignored at best and actively undermined at worst.

denial

This stage is defined by a lack of acceptance of any change and denies that there will be any impact on the individual. People keep acting as if the change has not happened, using old practices and processes and ignoring evidence or information contrary to their belief systems.

It can be seen from the transition curve that it is important for an individual to understand the impact that the change will have on their own personal construct systems; and for them to be able to work through the implications for their self perception. Any change, no matter how small, has the potential to impact on an individual and may generate conflict between existing values and beliefs and anticipated altered ones.

One danger for the individual, team and organization occurs when an individual persists in operating a set of practices that have been consistently shown to fail (or result in an undesirable consequence) in the past and that do not help extend and elaborate their world-view. Another danger area is that of denial where people maintain operating as they always have denying that there is any change at all. Both of these can have detrimental impact on an organization trying to change the culture and focus of its people.

Handling Transitions

When I was a child, I was afraid to go to summer camp. Most kids found the prospect exciting and the experience fun, but I dreaded it. What would the activities be like? Who would my counselors be? What other kids were going? Would I be made to swim if I didn’t want to?

After a few days, the camp routine became just that—routine—and I settled down. But transition periods remained challenging for me throughout my adolescence. As adults, many of us still struggle with change-even good change, like starting a new job, moving to a nicer house, or getting married. Just what is it about transition periods we find so challenging and how can we get through them with less stress?

THE GREAT UNKNOWN

In my case, transitions were difficult because they represented a change from the known to the unknown. The unknown, for many of us, feels unsafe. We worry the unknown, once known, will prove to be more than we can handle, a problem we can’t solve. It’s easy to be confident when you know exactly what you’re facing and how to overcome it, but far harder to be confident when what you’re facing is unclear. So we try to learn as many details as we can about whatever knew environment we’re about to enter, striving to make the abstract more concrete for the purpose of measuring ourselves against it, of finding ways to minimize any potential dangers.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH

But in doing this we sell ourselves short. Why not instead view transition periods as ways to exercise our ability to manage change? If the last time you faced a transition you found yourself a wreck—anxiously overreacting, struggling to get a good night’s sleep, snapping at your loved ones out of fear—why not look upon your next transition as practice. Reflect on and catalog your reactions during transitions as they occur. Then each time you find yourself facing a new one, pick one thing you didn’t do well during your last one. Maybe you belittled your abilities, failing to believe you were up to the job for which you were hired. Maybe you worried incessantly about how you were going to handle all the details of a move. Whatever reaction you had that you’d like to improve, during this next transition focus on it and it alone. Don’t worry about failing to live up to any other expectation. Just strive to improve this one thing. If, when you’re through the transition, you find you didn’t, that’s okay, too. The beauty of viewing transition periods as practice for improving yourself is that you get to keep trying until you do.

Further:

Just do it. It may be a cliche to say that half the battle is just showing up, but cliches are cliches for a specific reason: they’re true. Remind yourself you don’t have to be perfect and that you don’t have to do everything at once. Just getting through a transition is the definition of success.

Look upon transitions—even negative transitions—as adventures. You can change poison into medicine. Even if you’re fired. Even if you get divorced. Even if you become chronically ill. We all have the innate ability to create value out of hardship, and in so doing often add an enjoyable dimension to our lives we didn’t have before.

Remake your reputation. A transition is also an opportunity to re-brand yourself. Perhaps you called in sick too much on your last job and want to become a better employee. Perhaps you allowed life’s small inconveniences to irritate you too much and want to become a more carefree person. If you look upon a transition period as an opportunity to change yourself, you’ll be able to introduce a better self to the new people you meet. But take care not to fall prey to the misguided notion that simply by changing your physical location you’ll change anything else about your life. Unless you change yourself, you’ll recreate the same old life you always had, just in a new space.

Transitions are part and parcel of life, in which nothing ever stands still or remains the same. To learn to navigate transitions therefore is to learn to navigate life itself. Take the time to reflect on how you handle transitions. Plan ways to improve. Because if you can learn to face transition periods with equanimity, not much else will be left in life to disturb you.

The question whether a constitutional remedy exists for every individual was raised quite early on in the homeopathic literature by Hahnemann himself when he stated that in order to cure completely and permanently you needed to find the “deeper” indicated remedy according to his theory of the chronic miasms. 1

The meaning of such expression was never clear in the homeopathic sense and before one can talk about a constitutional remedy we should define what we -in homeopathy – really mean with this expression.

Many times in homeopathic gatherings one hears the question “what is your constitutional remedy?” or even worse when somebody asks a supposed expert “what do you think is my constitutional remedy?” Such ideas have degraded homeopathy and have given it an air of magic or superficiality that our science does not deserve.

I will not go in to the different types and descriptions of several authors defining the meaning of this word before or after Hahnemann but I will rather stick to the most practical and applicable meaning of it in everyday practice.

According to such an understanding, a remedy can be defined as constitutional when – by virtue of its symptomatology – it covers the basic chronic or acute symptomatology of the person throughout his life; in spite of the fact that such a person may suffer, in different stages of his life, from different nosological entities like otitis media, lumbago, sciatica, bronchitis, or psoriasis, the indicated remedy remains always the same.

If we accept such a definition as correct then experience, from every day practice, shows the following.

– Those such patients could be found today in almost none of these cases or at very best in very very few cases. These are the very healthy people living up to a very old age with very few problems. Today they are found practically only in rural areas and in the clean climates of the mountains, living a very quite life, away from civilisation and almost never in the crowded cities.

– Such cases could have been met more frequently in older times when people were much healthier in comparison with today’s degenerated states of health that we meet in our everyday practice.

– Another point that we have to consider is the fact that according to our theory if a person gets his right remedy-or his constitutional one- then -at least theoretically- he will be cured and therefore automatically change from the type of person he is. The question again remains is there another remedy that could help such a patient or should we expect that with the same remedy we will solve all his future problems?

To suppose that after the constitutional remedy the patient remains well for the rest of his life, again on a theoretical basis, is not correct as everyone is subject to degeneration and death, notwithstanding their excellent level of health. Even worse is if the individual already has a bad state of health by the time he approaches someone for homeopathic treatment.

– We therefore come easily to the conclusion that such a definition has no meaning in deep chronic cases, which we meet today.

What can be said then, in such cases where you need two, three, four or even more remedies before you can say that the patient is really better?

Which will be considered his “constitutional remedy” out of the three, four or five remedies that may have been prescribed during the course of three, four or five years?

What will be the constitutional remedy in such a type of case where four or five remedies have been prescribed, all with some results?

Obviously it is not possible to say with certainty whether one of them was the constitutional remedy.

But if one of those remedies helped the most, can we say that this particular remedy could be called the patient’s constitutional remedy? What is the significance of calling it “a constitutional” remedy?

The experienced homeopath knows that these types of cases are actually the most frequent in one’s practice.

So to define what we mean by “constitutional” remedy is not an easy task and perhaps a task that is not necessary for successful treatment.

However, the question could be phrased differently:

If one can find a clear-cut remedy to start treatment in a chronic case could such remedy be called constitutional?

The answer to this question is again complex because we encounter the following dilemma.

If after giving the supposedly constitutional remedy we have a relapse, there are various possibilities:

a. If the same remedy is indicated and benefits the patient in the case of a relapse, and if this happens for a third time, may we then say that this is his constitutional remedy?

b. There is a possibility that after a relapse from such a remedy the next remedy needed is different in order to complete or to complement the action of the first so that the improvement will continue even though the first remedy acted well.

In such a case can we say that the first remedy was his constitutional remedy?

c. There is a possibility that a second remedy could be given with some amelioration but the third remedy is the one that appears to really benefit the patient. Can we say that their constitutional remedy was the third one?

d. In today’s cases we frequently see that even when a remedy is clearly indicated at the beginning of a case but after giving such a remedy there is no improvement, then his next symptomatology changes dramatically and requires another remedy. In such a case can we say that the first or the second remedy was constitutional?

In conclusion we might say that we can define a constitutional remedy as the main remedy that will benefit the patient most.

But such a statement has no meaning apart from indicating that there is one remedy that is always indicated at a certain stage of pathology for each patient and such remedy should be found and prescribed in order to get the most benefit for the patient.

Experience shows that in every complicated case there is a precise sequence of remedies that should be discovered after studying the case and a correct evaluation of the symptomatology, and such sequence has to be prescribed at the right time and in the right potency before we can affect a cure in today’s complicated cases.

The whole explanation of this process is impossible to expound upon here and the basics can be found in my book A New Model for Health and Disease. It is not possible to give all the intricacies of the subject we are talking about in a short treatise.

In the meantime the student of classical homeopathy understands that there are some signs and symptoms that come together in order to form the unique picture of a remedy. Such descriptions usually refer again to the “pure” types or if you like, the “constitutional” types. It is the “essential picture” of the remedy in its psychopathology.

That means that every remedy has some basic characteristic symptoms in its mental emotional and physical pathology and if these characteristics are observed in the patient we tend to say that this is the constitutional remedy of such a patient. From the above it is obvious that we again use this term in a loose manner.

It is also important for us to understand that each person may show a tendency towards certain pathology but may never develop such pathology or we can say that he/she is not sick unless he/she manifests such symptomatology.

Yet the remedy can be detected from his mental-emotional make up plus a few prodromal physical symptoms, which are covered by the remedy. In such a case again we tend to talk about a constitutional remedy.

So a constitutional remedy is one that will actually prevent the pathology from manifesting. For example, the fact that somebody has an inordinate desire for sweets, is tired especially in the morning on waking, has a great thirst for water but drinks it in small quantities frequently, and also has some anxiety coming in the afternoon hours indicates the prescription of Lycopodium in spite of the fact that the actual diabetes mellitus has not yet appeared in the laboratory examinations.

But according to the theories of Hahnemann himself such an individual after ten years may eventually develop different pathology with symptoms indicating Medorrhinum as a second level of pathology, and again the question will arise whether the Lycopodium or the Medorrhinum was his constitutional remedy.

It is obvious therefore from this above short analysis that the meaning of “constitutional” remedy is rather an elusive one or better that it has eluded several generations of homeopaths so far and it is my belief that it will continue to do so in the future.

Here are a few examples from public courses. The cases are on video.

A case of severe generalised neurodermatitis with celiac disease shown on Video in 1990 in Celle Germany, in a child of three years old, who had received several remedies without any effect, amongst them also Pulsatilla. When I saw her I prescribed Tuberculinum which brought about a severe further aggravation of the dermatitis with a small amelioration of the digestion. Six months later when I saw the case again during the course her symptoms had changed and now clearly indicated Pulsatilla. This was given with an immediate relief of the symptoms of neurodermatitis and also further amelioration of the digestive problems.

Experience shows that this child, as she grows, will need certain other remedies for occasional problems. Which is the constitutional remedy? Tuberculinum? But this brought an aggravation, not a cure, yet it was the necessary intermediate for Pulsatilla to act.

Another case of a woman, 40 years old suffering with severe chronic headaches where several remedies-amongst them Lycopodium and Natrum muriaticum- were prescribed without any effect. She received Chelidonium in my first consultation, from which she had a severe aggravation without much relief, but five months later and while there was no apparent amelioration the symptoms changed to point more clearly to Lycopodium which gave a noticeable relief and finally she received Natrum muriaticum which cleared up the case in a treatment that lasted a year and a half. Which was the constitutional remedy? Chelidonium? Why did it not cure then and why did it need the complimentary of Lyc and Natr-m.? Was it Natr-m or Lycopodium? Why they did not cure in the first place?

So we see in the life of a patient who is treated exclusively with homeopathy for several years that there may be a remedy that has helped most but needed the support of other remedies as well.